[Book Spoilers] A Gendry Development

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With Gendry replacing Edric, it sort of got my imagination going (uh oh). Gendry in the book thus far becomes a bit-part player, a smithy at an inn. I know not what George RR Martin has in store for him, but as far as a Feast for Crows took us, Edric Storm is arguably more 'amidst the action', Essos in other words, where multiple players are ending up.

I don't know whether this is the best place to encourage discussion of this, or whether it has already been discussed (in which case most likely at great length, dismissal, grumbled admission ad infinitum, or whatever the Norse is for it ;) ).

Thanks for reading anyway!

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I personally don't mind the idea of Gendry being Edric. In many viewers minds (those who can remember anyway) Gendry is the last Bastard, so using him instead of a new character makes sense. They should be able to make it work plot-wise.

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I actually take all this to mean that Gendry's role in the series isn't very important.

The show made the choice not to introduce the three children at Dragonstone - Edric Storm, Shireen and Devan - at the same time as they introduced Stannis and his court, presumably in an effort to keep the number of new castmembers down.

They now need a king's bastard that Mellisandre threatens to burn, because Davos needs to free him and give Stannis a speech about his royal obligations to get Stannis up to the Wall to defeat Mance.

If Gendry can replace Edric for that purpose, that suggests that whatever narrative purpose Gendry was serving in the books as smith for the BwB isn't relevant to any major plot point.

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This is one of the deviations from the book that makes sense/doesn't bother me. The viewers wouldn't have understood about Edric Storm. Davos can still save Gendry from being burned. If he doesn't, now THAT would piss me off, I think it is vital to Davos' character development that he has the balls to stand up to Stannis and save a little boy, knowing there was a very good chance he'd be burned alive for it.

as long as he risks his own ass to save Gendry, the change is ok with me.

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Although I do think him (in the books) being with the BwB under UnCat has SOME sort of plot point somewhere, I can't see how this change means that the only option is Gendry will be king in the end. I don't see Gendry wanting to be king and I definitely don't see Stannis legitimizing Gendry so that he is first in line for the Iron Throne. I think that the people who think this are only seeing what they want to see.

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Although I do think him (in the books) being with the BwB under UnCat has SOME sort of plot point somewhere, I can't see how this change means that the only option is Gendry will be king in the end. I don't see Gendry wanting to be king and I definitely don't see Stannis legitimizing Gendry so that he is first in line for the Iron Throne. I think that the people who think this are only seeing what they want to see.

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I can't help but wonder where Gendry will flee to when he's saved by Davos. I know Edric went to Lys, but he was highborn and had knights to go with him and act as his guardians. I can't see the same happening for Gendry.

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I said this in the other thread about the scene with Melisandre / Gendry / Arya / Thoros etc... but it bears repeating here:

In the books, we're left wondering what happens to both Edric and Gendry. Both have seemingly disappeared off the radar of importance based on where they're ending up. But I don't think GRRM would have included so much about both of them if he didn't intend one or both of them to be future key players in some way. Too much detail and information is written about them just to be red herring dead-end characters in my opinion. However, in the show, we are learning that Edric doesn't exist at all (based on no casting for him where he would have normally appeared in the story with Shireen at Dragonstone) and that Gendry's role is now taking a much more central place in the storyline. Again, the writers of the show likely know endings we don't and therefore chose which of the Baratheon bastards to make more prominent than the other, or nonexistent.

I'm sad that Edric doesn't seemingly play any future role based on the show, but happy they've replaced him with Gendry which means Gendry must somehow play a more important role and not just fabricated for entertainment on the show. I'll be pretty disappointed if they are in fact fabricating his role and this new story plot without there being any real correlation in the books for his future.

All that being said, I think the hints were pretty strong that Gendry is in fact going to be some sort of key player in the story later in parts of the book we haven't yet gotten to read. I'm happy about that!

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Thanks for all the replies. To those discussing whether this means Gendry will end up king/sit the IT, I didn't mean to imply this.

I was merely observing that a lot of characters are heading for Essos, and Gendry, if substituted for Edric as apparently is the case, is one of those characters. Incidentally, I saw a similar thread which had been posted before mine which touched upon similar themes, apologies.

As a side note, I always considered Gendry's extended stay with the BwB as a product of the 'Five-Year-Gap'.